The idea of automated tournament was brought up before but it doesn't seem to have made much headway from Juggle. I think it would be useful to see how a tournament with near "automatic" rules would progress. In other words, I would run a tournament with very stringent rules with perhaps 8 to 16 people matched based on ELO. 1st with last. Second with second last etc. If there are 16, we could split into 4 groups of 4. To make sure, people who forfeit debates and leave the site don't join, we could institute a minimum ELO of 2800.

The reason for proposing stringent rules is to ensure that the tournament runs to completion at whatever cost. Some proposed rules would be:- 4 round debates with one introductory round.- All 7 points voted for the winner of the debate.- If first round is not accepted within 3 days of matchup, debaters would be prodded/replaced.- If no resolution can be agreed upon by the debaters in 3 days, the tournament organizer would randomly pull up a policy or public forum topic from the NFL and randomly assign sides to the debaters (using a random number generator).

I think if we do it right, we can make this a grand event like Freeman's tournament (which is one that I remember set up a lot of matches between DDO regulars).

Note that this is not a signup thread for a tournament. It is a thread for responses to ideas to see the interest level and discussing the Pro's and Con's of having such a tournament. If interest level is high among members with ELO > 2800, I might run it. If not, then I probably won't. I want to hear opinions about the general concept. If it works, perhaps we can propose to Juggle an enhancement suggestion of automated tournaments in that thread.

An interesting idea. The only question is how we factor ELO ratings into debates where a person doesn't accept a challenge. Replacements might solve this problem, although you'd have issues later in the tournament and if your replacements don't agree... maybe a way to penalise ELO if participation in an automated tournament doesn't occur?

Also, a far more difficult thing to enable, but might it be possible for a tournament director to grant special dispensation to certain debaters under ELO limits? There are some debaters under 2800 who are good, even if not so many as to outweigh the harms of opening the floodgates by lowering the minimum ELO rating. This is probably the only real advantage of the manual system as it is, given the probable programmatic difficulties involved in such a request.

"Tis not in mortals to command success
But we"ll do more, Sempronius, we"ll deserve it

At 4/11/2013 3:03:09 AM, Logic_on_rails wrote:An interesting idea. The only question is how we factor ELO ratings into debates where a person doesn't accept a challenge. Replacements might solve this problem, although you'd have issues later in the tournament and if your replacements don't agree... maybe a way to penalise ELO if participation in an automated tournament doesn't occur?

Also, a far more difficult thing to enable, but might it be possible for a tournament director to grant special dispensation to certain debaters under ELO limits? There are some debaters under 2800 who are good, even if not so many as to outweigh the harms of opening the floodgates by lowering the minimum ELO rating. This is probably the only real advantage of the manual system as it is, given the probable programmatic difficulties involved in such a request.

The 2800 is just a preliminary suggestion. I think we should potentially make other exceptions like people being exempt if they have been here for longer than a year or two years because if that is the case, they will be unlikely to forfeit and leave.